"Some things that move us are beautiful, others are sublime. But the sublime moves us more profoundly than the beautiful. See how Edmund Burke tied the experience of the sublime to the possibility of pain and how the idea went on to influence the artistic Romanticism movement. Voiced by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton."

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Metro–Land, the 1973 BBC documentary was Sir John Betjeman's "gift to romanticise the mundane: in this case a tube ride from Baker Street to Amersham, celebrating the north–west London suburbs created by the Metropolitan Railway between 1910 and 1933. ...

'Metro–Land' was the advertising slogan developed to entice workers from cramped homes in Central London out into the rural paradise of Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It was invented in 1915 by the Metropolitan Railway's in–house copywriter James Garland, who according to legend was ill with influenza and sprang out of bed when he thought of the term. ...

It was, of course, largely a con. The creation of Metro–Land destroyed the very thing – open countryside – which was used to advertise it. The speculative homes thrown up around the new stations bore few resemblances to the Tudor cottages depicted in the advertising materials: most were dreary semis, constructed at great haste and sold for as little as £400 each. Modern first–time buyers can only dream: that is equivalent to just £20,000 in today's money."

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"'It is essential that New Zealanders start dealing much more actively with urban issues,' asserts Professor Harvey Perkins, recently appointed Director of Transforming Cities: Innovations for Sustainable Futures (formerly, Transforming Auckland) and Professor of Planning.

'We need to embrace the ideas of 'urban sustainability and liveability',' notions he explores in his most recent publication, Place, Identity and Everyday Life in a Globalizing World, co–authored with Professor David Thorns. This work followed a series of jointly published articles with colleagues at Lincoln University and The University of Auckland critically examining the ways in which sustainability thinking has been interpreted and incorporated in urban planning in New Zealand."